At the briefing dedicated to the relaunch of Squad Busters, the game's key developers admitted that they were overly optimistic about it at the start.
“One of the mistakes we made with the launch of Squad Busters was assuming it would appeal to multiple user groups. We thought it could attract casual, mid-core, and even hardcore audiences simultaneously. Such games are like unicorns—they don’t appear very often. Unfortunately, Squad Busters wasn’t one of them. Moreover, it possibly missed the mark entirely when it came to the compatibility of controls and gameplay: while the controls are highly accessible, the game itself is quite intense. Plus, the game has a lot of strategy. Yet, to uncover its depth, one has to play very diligently. So, we concluded that maybe this isn’t a game that casual audiences would enjoy. Of course, we want the game to be comprehensible to many, but ultimately, we focused on more experienced mobile gamers, tailored the game to them, and started marketing it towards them,” said Rob Lowe, head of marketing at Supercell.
Additionally, during the briefing, it was revealed that:
- game downloads have surpassed 60 million installations;
- the core development team consists of 50 people;
- most of the team is based in Helsinki, but the game is also worked on in London and Shanghai;
- the campaign featuring live stars was not very effective (again explained by the focus on a casual audience);
- the team did not "peek" at the playbook of those leading the development of Brawl Stars at Supercell (although, gameplay-wise, Squad Busters became much closer to it following the update);
- the team does not regret how the launch of Squad Busters went. On the contrary, they believe that such a launch helped identify core issues in the game and fix them.